Editorial: California pension reform imperiled

2013-02-01 16:12:11

When he signed pension reform legislation in September, Gov. Jerry Brown enthused about the provisions, "These are hard-fought. They aren't that easy." The reforms also were modest. They applied only to employees hired beginning Jan. 1, 2013, raised the retirement age for some employees, required employees to pay at least half of pension costs and set the maximum annual retirement payment at $132,120.

The main purpose of the reforms was to preclude criticism that the $6 billion raised by Proposition 30 if it passed in November mainly would go to pensions instead of to schools, as advertised.

Now, those pension reforms are under attack. Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, has introduced Assembly Bill 160. The legislative summary says it would exempt from the 2012 reforms "retirement plans for public employees whose collective bargaining rights are protected by a specified provision of federal law."

According to the Sacramento Bee, AB160 means that any "mass-transit federal grants" also mandate that a state agency must "preserve whatever employees' collective bargaining rights are authorized in that state." If that interpretation holds, it "would exempt thousands of public transportation workers from the law."

"The union folks who had muted opposition to the pension reform last year are now starting to unwind all that after the tax increase passed," Dan Pellissier told us; he's the president of California Pension Reform, which works to reduce taxpayer liability for government pensions. "They are just chipping away at the reform now. Eventually they want a flood to start."

He said that Mr. Alejo and the unions, in citing federal law, "have come up with a thin pretext for rolling back the changes." He pointed to a 1982 Supreme Court decision that held: "Congress made it absolutely clear that it did not intend to create a body of federal law applicable to labor relations between local governmental entities and transit workers [and] would not supersede state law."

This would be a good time for Gov. Brown to step in and stop the erosion of the pension reform he brokered – in order to pass the tax increase he championed. That was the promise made to Californians, and it ought to be kept.